If we had been able to use poor Socks for food there is no doubt that we should have been able to get further south, and perhaps even have reached the Pole itself. But I must also mention that had we managed to get to the Pole, we could scarcely have caught the ship before she was compelled to leave by the approach of winter.
During the last weeks of the journey outwards, and the long march back when our allowance had been reduced to twenty ounces per man a day, I confess without one atom of shame that we really thought of little but food. Man becomes very primitive when he is desperately hungry, and neither the glory of the mountains that towered high on our sides, nor the majesty of the great glacier up which we travelled so painfully, appealed to any extent to our emotions.
I used often to find myself wondering whether people who suffer from hunger in the big cities of civilisation felt as we were feeling, and I concluded that they did not, for no barrier of law and order would have been allowed to stand between us and any food that had been available. The difference must be that the man who starves in a city is weakened and hopeless and without spirit while we—until nearly the end—were vigorous and keen.
We could not joke about food in any way that is possible for the man who is hungry in the ordinary sense. True we thought and talked about it most of the time, but always in the most serious manner.
On the outward march we were not severely hungry until we reached the great glacier, and then we were so occupied with the dangers of climbing and of crossing crevasses that we were unable to talk much. And afterwards on the plateau our faces were generally so covered with ice that unnecessary conversation was out of the question.
It was on the march back, after we had got down the glacier, and were tramping over the Barrier surface that we talked freely of food. Strange feelings, indeed, did I have when I looked back over our notes, and saw the wonderful meals that we promised to eat when we could get inside a really good restaurant.
We used to tell each other, with perfect seriousness, about the new dishes that we had thought of, and if the dish met with general approval there would be a chorus of "Ah! That's good."
The "Wild roll" was admitted to be the high-water mark of gastronomic luxury. He proposed that the cook should take a supply of well-seasoned minced meat, wrap it in rashers of fat bacon, and place around the whole an outer covering of rich pastry so that it would take the form of a big sausage-roll. Then this roll was to be fried with plenty of fat.
My best dish, which I admit I put forward with a good deal of pride as we marched over the snow, was a sardine pasty. And I remember that one day Marshall came forward with a proposal for a thick roll of suet pudding with plenty of jam all over it, and there arose quite a heated argument whether he could claim this dish to be an invention, or whether it was not the jam roll already known to the housewives of civilisation.
One point there was on which we were all agreed, and that was our wish not to have any jellies or things of that sort at our future meals. The idea of eating such slippery stuff as jelly did not appeal in the least to any one of us.